So is flash really dead?
So Apple have pretty much dug their heals in over flash on the iPad. After reading Steve Jobs piece on Flash, I can see what he means. Flash burst onto the scene at a time when html was just not that graphically rich. Animated Gifs could handle the graphical bits, there was nothing really there to handle the sound. Nothing tied that together. Flash gained pace rapidly.
Here we are several years later and HTML itself has not really evolved. A couple of extra tags here and there, but on the Whole an img tag is still an image tag. What has changed is the JavaScript and CSS approach to the WebDesign. Allowing for things like JQuery to really take the web development world to another level. As computers have become more powerful and able to run really complex client side scripts, so the scripts have become better and better. Combined with a good clean way of separating style from markup.
Is Flash still needed.
No. 90% of the flash on the web is used these days for small adverts with a couple of animated elements to it. All of which can be done in JavaScript. Trouble is you have a large developer/designer following of web guys that know Flash. Adobe have made some great tools that will prevent it dying in the short term. It’s easier to create such an animation in flash than using javascript and css.
Silverlight
Microsoft have a habit of backing the wrong horse. Adobe have a large market share with Flash, so they go and create technology to rival it. If Microsoft really wanted to get ahead in this market, they need to create some great HTML5 tools. Just like Adobe where challenged todo recently by Steve Jobs. The world does not need another type of plugin for rich web applications.
What developers need
Flash has some great tools to aid it’s creation. In order for HTML5 to get the backing of the designers, we need some great HTML5 creation tools. Easy to the point where a designer can do a point and click with a bit of artwork.
Over the next year or so things like SmokeScreen (http://www.smokescreen.us/demo) will become more common. I’ll make a bold statement here that in 5-10 years time frame, flash will lose more and more market share. To the point where it will be completely ignored in main stream sites.
In the mean time, so you need a fancy bit of animation done for your website that works well for the iPad or iPhone get in touch.
OneResult can help.
